Jerez

History

Before the Spanish, the valley was home to Zacateco and Guachichil peoples. Cristóbal de Oñate passed through in 1531 searching the hillsides for precious metals, and Spaniards were living in the valley by mid century. The town itself was founded at the end of 1569 and definitively settled by 1572, when Captain Pedro Carrillo Dávila and other settlers established Jerez de la Frontera to guard the road between Guadalajara and Zacatecas and keep the mines supplied. They named it for the Spanish city, whose countryside the valley recalled.

Carrillo Dávila was rewarded with large cattle grants, and ranching and farming became the basis of local wealth. The town hall occupies a mansion built between 1730 and 1745. In 1811 royalist forces executed suspected insurgents in the main square, which pushed the town toward the independence cause. The 19th century was prosperous: the Spring Fair began in 1824, the sanctuary of La Soledad was built in the first decades of the century, and the Hinojosa Theater went up in 1869. Haciendas around Jerez were among the most productive in the region, though the railroad never arrived.

Revolutionary troops under Pánfilo Natera attacked on April 19, 1913, and a fire destroyed the municipal archive. In 1952 the town took the name Jerez de García Salinas, after the locally born statesman Francisco García Salinas. It became a Pueblo Mágico in 2007.